A community event is a hard thing to plan. You have to make sure you have room for people. You have to make sure you have enough supplies/decorations. If you serve food, you have to make sure there is enough food and enough drinks. It is quite difficult to plan an event when you only have three weeks to do so since you just came up with it out of nowhere.
Cuyahoga Falls. You surprised me. After hearing some people say that they could not make it to the Free Community Movie Night hosted by Cuyahoga Falls High School Student Council, it made my standards for this event go down. Well, I guess I should start at the beginning.
Three weeks ago, the Fundraising Committee, consisting of Bobby Read as 'Supervisor', Sakshi Shahi as Chair and Marissa Bowers as Member, of the Cuyahoga Falls High School Student Council struggled to come up with an effective fundraising to raise funds to go to future StuCo events and eventually into scholarships to worthy seniors.
Eventually, the Fundraising Committee came up with the idea of a Community Movie Night because a fellow StuCo member had mentioned it. We decided as a Student Council to show "Monsters, Inc." After finding out that it would cost near $300 to show the movie and charge admission because of copyrights, we quickly thought this idea had failed. Well, think again.
Due to the smarts between the three people, the committee decided to not charge admission, but sell concessions and have a photo booth. So we began trying to get donations from businesses and see if they would be able to donate food to us so we could sell and make a profit. This is where the community is such a blessing. Five pizza places gave us donations. We ended up with 8 sheet pizzas and 11 regular large pizzas. Jubilee graciously donated 6 dozen glazed donuts. and we had Cinemark Theater, Regal Theater, and Metropolis Popcorn all donate popcorn for us to sell. This added so much food that we would make a lot of money off of. Additionally, ACME and Walmart both donated gift cards so we would be able to purchase drinks and plates and napkins for the event.
A huge shoutout to the CF Parks & Recreation Department for shutting down the lights on the tennis courts for the night of the movie so people would be able to see the screen. Also big thank you to the Police Department for allowing us to play the movie outside at night with speakers! It made the movie a lot easier to understand!
So the day of the event comes. No rain. No clouds. Beautiful day. Perfect weather. The Fundraising Committee has a little jump in their heartbeat as they hope a lot of people show up. We had advertised in the local newspaper and on social media platforms. It was nerve wracking up until the point where people showed up 40 minutes early just to get a good spot.
As it came close to the start of the movie, more and more people are showing up. About 150 people attended the movie night which is phenomenal. Cuyahoga Falls astounded me and made me a really happy person because of their showing up.
Perfect night for a perfect event! Good job Cuyahoga Falls! Hope you had fun! Look for another Community Movie Night in the Springtime! I am so proud of this city the local and cooperative businesses, and the amazing people that live here!
